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When Developers Strike Back

…sometimes, you just gotta take the blame yourself.

As you all know, here I like to stick up for developers and studios which get a lot of unfair stick, most notably The Division and Gearbox recently. However I won’t defend them when they themselves screw up. That wouldn’t be fair or a fair reflection on my feelings.

Recently Ubisoft Massive have began giving players 3 day bans on their new hit title “The Division.” Why is this happening I hear you ask? Well, them players were abusing bugs within the game – such as glitching through walls.

Three days? THREE DAYS MASSIVE? No, somehow I don’t quite think so. Why are we even punishing players for even abusing these glitches/bugs? It’s YOUR fault for not testing your product correctly or enough. And in a game like The Division if you don’t glitch you will get left behind when it comes to areas such as the dark zone. I am sorry, but that is the truth. to make it all utter stupidity, the refused to recognise this was even happening for two days! WHAT?!

To make it all even worse, it isn’t even every player who did it! Players like me, I will hold my hands up now, I abused this bug about 3-4 times to complete the incursion and to get better gear before I got bored shit less. So it makes me wonder – what the hell was the criteria? Did you have to do it a certain amount of times? A certain combination of moves? I have no idea! To be perfectly honest I am not sure Massive do neither.

So it’s either you ban everyone who did it, or better yet choose the appropriate action here and don’t ban anyone for YOUR mistakes. It is not the CUSTOMERS fault you can’t code or test your product adequately and as far as I am concerned this is just a game mechanic. If only they were more vigilant fixing bugs such as people not being able to log on for over a month because of a crafted backpack or double revive WHICH IS STILL IN THE GAME!

Seriously Massive, I love your game but you are making it very very hard to justify putting more time into it when every patch you put out breaks something else and you just don’t seem to care about the bugs. Just as long as the players don’t benefit – nice one!

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2 thoughts on “When Developers Strike Back”

Three days isn’t anything. I go without playing specific games or games at all for three days all the time.

As far as the blame shifting, I don’t think it is fair to say, “You failed at testing this game, therefore it is your problem.” I think it is pretty obvious this type of gameplay was not intended. Exploiting that just because you can doesn’t seem fair to others who choose to do otherwise because they realize its an unintended feature.

It is kind of like speeding while driving. Certain areas have certain limits, but there isn’t always someone there to enforce it. Sure, you may be able to get away with it once or twice. You may even be able to do it repeatedly if you are lucky. But getting caught doesn’t mean you can argue that you should not be punished because it is the government’s fault for designing roads that can be sped on.

I wish games were less buggy when they came out. I wish developers tested them more. I wish they’d fix these issues a lot sooner before they get out of hand. None of that means I will take advantage of obvious flaws and glitches for my own game, especially in a multiplayer-focused game.

I can see where you are coming from but breaking a speed limit isn’t really the same thing in my opinion. You break the speed limit, you could not only potentially get yourself into some serious trouble with the law but you also run the risk of killing somebody due to your wreckless actions.

Exploiting a game mechanic isn’t the same, because I am pretty sure I never even had to agree to a TOS for the Division. License Agreement yes but there was nothing in there about exploiting a game mechanic, just the usual hacking thing.

So it begs the question, what grounds are they doing it on?

Agree completley on the less buggy thing – The Division is breaking my heart, every patch seems to be fixing one thing and breaking two more. Frustrating.